intro to social research ch 7

13. You want to examine the relationship between family size and family cohesion. You use as your sample all the students in your research methods class. What kind of sampling design are you using?

Convenience

15. ______ is the general term for samples selected in accord with probability theory.

Probability sampling

5. The chief aim of probability sampling is to be able to select:

a sample whose statistics will accurately portray an unknown population parameter.

6. Drawing a judgmental sample:

allows researchers to use their prior knowledge about the population.

BCS

ask people about crimes they've experienced, includes crimes not reported to the police, does not include victimless crimes, depends on subjective decision if a person feels a crime has been committed, police reports

29. Which of the following statements is FALSE? a. If all the members of a population were identical there would be no need for sampling. b. In cases of perfect homogeneity a single case could represent an entire population. c. The human beings who compose any real population are similar. d. Because elements within the population typically differ, we need to do careful sampling. e. All of these statements are TRUE.

c. The human beings who compose any real population are similar.

Sammy did an experiment on children in a classroom. He measured their social anxiety on Monday, randomly assigned half of them to be taught yoga on Wednesday, and measured their social anxiety again on Friday. Teaching half of the children yoga on Wednesday is the:

independent variable.

A source of internal invalidity in which the process of measurement in pretesting and posttesting raises issues regarding conceptualization and operationalization is known as ________ .

instrumentation

NCVS

relies on sample rather than census, five stages, picked from survey design and who responds, depends on victims

21. If a field researcher wanted to learn a political organization's pattern of recruitment over time, the researcher might begin by interviewing a fairly recent recruit and ask who introduced that person to the organization. Then the researcher might interview the person named and ask who introduced that person to the political organization. This would be an example of:

snowball sampling.

10. A summary description of a given variable in a survey sample is called a:

statistic.

Lee selected people with only the highest self-esteem scores for her experiment on the effects of divorce on self-esteem. She should be particularly alert to which potential source of internal invalidity?

statistical regression

3. You are doing research on hospital personnel—orderlies, technicians, nurses, and doctors. You want to be sure you draw a sample that has cases in each of the personnel categories. You want to use probability sampling. An appropriate strategy would be:

stratified sampling.

31. When selecting variables for stratification, it is best to select variables that:

stratify based on the variables you want to represent.

18. Every kth element in a list is chosen for inclusion in the sample in:

systematic sampling.

27. Periodicity is particularly important in:

systematic sampling.

24. A study population is:

that aggregation of elements from which the sample is actually selected.

22. A disadvantage of stratified sampling is:

that it requires you to have some prior knowledge about the elements in the population prior to drawing the sample.

9. Probability samples are advantageous to the researcher because:

the method by which they are selected limits conscious and unconscious sampling bias and the accuracy or representativeness of the sample can be estimated.

16. Disproportionate sampling and weighting are used by the researcher:

to ensure a sufficient number of cases in each of the sample subpopulations; to give a proportionate representation to each sample element; to provide a representative picture of the total population; and to handle situations involving the errors and approximation that are often inherent in complex, multistage designs.

34. In a sample stratified by gender, the sampling error on this variable is reduced to zero. a. True b. False

true

35. Field researchers are often interested in studying deviant cases in order to improve their understanding of the more typical pattern. a. True b. False

true

37. Snowball sampling would be an effective strategy for a researcher to use if a researcher was interested in studying a population of gang members. a. True b. False

true

40. Sampling error is reduced through an increase in the sample size and an increased homogeneity of the elements being sampled. a. True b. False

ture

42. Stratification represents a modification to rather than an alternative to simple random sampling and systematic sampling. a. True b. False

ture

44. A stratified sample is more likely to be representative on several variables than is a simple random sample. a. True b. False

ture

45. In a situation of perfect homogeneity there is little need to be concerned with careful sampling procedures. a. True b. False

ture

46. Simple random sampling is the most effective way to further understand uncommon populations. a. True b. False

ture

48. If a population were perfectly homogeneous, a single case could represent the entire population. a. True b. False

ture

49. Findings based on a sample can be taken as representing the elements that compose the sampling frame. a. True b. False

ture

23. Statistical computations assume that you have done:

simple random sampling.

2. In general, as sample size increases:

the standard error decreases in size.

39. Generally, the more heterogeneous the population, the more beneficial it is to use stratified sampling. a. True b. False

ture

________ is a source of internal invalidity caused by subjects dropping out of an experiment before it is completed

Experimental mortality

________ involves measuring subjects on a dependent variable before exposing them to a stimulus representing an independent variable.

Pretesting

11. Dr. Smith is instructing his graduate students to put together a sample for an upcoming research study of college students. The graduate students were asked to stand outside of the student union to solicit participants, finding 50 freshmen, 50 sophomore, 50 juniors, and 50 seniors. What sort of sampling method is being used?

Quota sampling

25. Professor Hall was planning to do a field study of hitchhikers. Hall wanted to be sure that persons representing all different age, racial, and sex categories were included in the sample of hitchhikers. What kind of sampling scheme would you recommend?

Quota sampling

Which design addresses the problem of testing interaction with the stimulus?

Solomon four-group design

12. Dr. Chang is conducting a research study of undergraduate students at her college. She wants to ensure an equal number of students from each grade level, so she uses the list of all students provided by the registrar's office. From each list, she randomly selects 50 students from each group. What strategy of sampling is Dr. Chang using?

Stratified sampling

20. A researcher who uses a list of registered voters as a sampling frame, and selects every 5th person on the randomized list is engaging in what kind of sampling?

Systematic

47. We typically sample with replacement. a. True b. False

false

38. Multistage sampling designs tend to have smaller sampling errors than single-stage sampling designs. a. True b. False

false

41. Each stage in cluster sampling adds additional sampling error that must be taken into account. a. True b. False

false

43. The size of the population must be taken into account when deciding on sample size. a. True b. False

false

what does the bell shaped curve or normal curve means?

Bell shaped represents the distribution of the variables

17. In terms of probability theory, the standard error is valuable because:

it indicates the extent to which the sample estimates will be distributed around the population parameter.

Kenny performed an experiment on the effects of after‐school educational activities on students' academic performance. His experimental group involved after‐school educational activities and his control group involved after‐school non‐educational activities. The majority of the children in the control group left the activities. Which source of internal invalidity is reflected?

Attrition

32. Tammy wants to do a telephone survey and she turns to you for help. Which of the following statements would mislead her?

Telephone directories are an excellent listing of a city's population.

________ is a source of internal invalidity in which repeatedly giving subjects one measure of a dependent variable may itself cause variations in the measurement.

Testing

4. Stratifying a population prior to drawing a sample:

generally occurs when the variables used to stratify are known to be associated with the dependent variable

19. After taking a random start between 1 and 20 and then taking every 20th element from the sampling frame, Smith learned that 40% of the sample believed the company's president was doing a good job. The calculated standard error was 3 percent. This means that: a. between 37% and 43% of the employees believe the president is doing a good job. b. you are 95% certain that between 37% and 43% of the employees believe the president is doing a good job. c. you are 68% certain that between 37% and 43% of the employees believe the president is doing a good job. d. you are 99% certain that between 37% and 43% of the employees believe the president is doing a good job. e. none of these choices are correct.

c. you are 68% certain that between 37% and 43% of the employees believe the president is doing a good job.

Sammy did an experiment on children in a classroom. He measured their social anxiety on Monday, randomly assigned half of them to be taught yoga on Wednesday, and measured their social anxiety again on Friday. The half of the children who were not taught yoga are known as the:

control group.

8. A sampling interval of 5 was used to select a sample from a population of 1000. How many elements are to be in the sample? a. 5 b. 50 c. 100 d. 200 e. 1000

d. 200

30. Samantha reports that 60 percent of the first year students at her university think they should be able to bring a car to campus. She also notes that she is 95 percent certain that between 50 and 70 percent of the first year students agree. Which of the following statements is FALSE? a. The range from 50 to 70 percent is a confidence interval. b. 95 percent refers to her confidence level. c. 60 percent is a statistic. d. She could be 99 percent certain that between 55 and 65 percent of the first year students agree. e. All of these choices are TRUE.

d. She could be 99 percent certain that between 55 and 65 percent of the first year students agree.

1. Nonprobability sampling:

denies the researcher the use of statistical theory to estimate the probability of correct inferences.

14. To ensure a sufficient number of cases from strata of varying sizes, researchers use:

disproportionate sampling.

28. Which of the following statements about informants is FALSE? a. An informant is a member of the group that you want to study. b. You usually want to select informants who are somewhat typical of the group that you are studying. c. Informants are often marginal within their group. d. Informants are useful in field research. e. The terms informant and respondent are interchangeable.

e. The terms informant and respondent are interchangeable.

7. The unit about which information is collected and that provides the basis of analysis is called a(n):

element.

33. If possible, always sampling from the entire general population is preferable. a. True b. False

false

36. A confidence interval at the 68% confidence level will be larger than one constructed at the 95% confidence level. a. True b. False

false

Izzie performed a study in which she introduced a stimulus--longer coffee breaks--and then measured how often employees left early--the dependent variable. No pretests were done. Which design did she use?

one-shot case study

26. Through a review of records, Rebecca was able to determine that the mean age of the population she was studying was 23.4 years old. This is known as a(n)

parameter.

The easiest of the true experimental designs to conduct is the:

posttest-only control group design.

Sammy did an experiment on children in a classroom. He measured their social anxiety on Monday, randomly assigned half of them to be taught yoga on Wednesday, and measured their social anxiety again on Friday. Measuring the children's social anxiety on Monday is the:

pretest.

Cornelia used the student directory at her school to select a random sample of 100 students for her laboratory experiment on decision making. She then used a quota matrix containing the variables she felt would most likely influence decision making, and assigned people within each matrix cell alternately to the experimental and control groups. What method of selecting subjects was used?

probability sampling